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It’s All in the Cards

LISBON — “We’re sick of hearing about the crisis, but we do like talking politics,” said Vincent, a 25-year-old Portuguese marketing student, as he, his friends Vincent and Diogo, and I gathered in a café in the upscale Lisbon neighborhood of Restelo to play cards.

The name of the game was “Vem Aí A Troika,” or “Here Comes the Troika.” It’s a card game with a darkly comic message about the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, and their hand in Portugal’s economic crisis.

When it came out in November, its creators, one of whom is a former university math professor, promised: “Now you, too, can bring the country to ruin.” Taking those words to heart, on Wednesday afternoon we decided to sidle up to the crisis with satire.

Poverty has spiked in Portugal, occasioned by a rise in the cost of living and steady drops in wages as well as dwindling employment. Vigorous protests last fall forced the conservative government to beat an uncharacteristic retreat from further increasing taxes on the middle class.

In Vem Aí A Troika, players amass money and power in the form of “euro” cards and “assets” cards representing wealth socked away in offshore accounts. So-called event cards representing elections, general strikes or tax hikes — each one an opportunity to shore up capital and influence — determine the flow of each round. Until, that is, the fateful moment when the Troika card is drawn. With that, the game ends. The winner is the player left with the biggest bounty.

As Diogo dealt, Vincent offered some context: “It all began with the E.U.,” which Portugal joined in 1986, when the Union was still called the European Economic Community. He motioned to a stray card on the table with the words “Subsidized Farmer” on it; it pictured a corpulent rancher standing on a barren plot of land with a knapsack full of gold coins.

“The idea was to incentivize Portuguese farmers not to plant key crops” in order to avoid glutting the European market, Vincent explained. But the effect, I was told, was to line private pockets at the public’s expense.

In 2011, Portugal received a 78-billion-euro bailout from the E.U., International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. The money came with strings attached: painful budget cuts and massive tax hikes. In the game, a red card announcing new taxes means that everyone has to pay up. The group groaned when this happened, muttering about an astronomical new real-life sales tax, which hovers at 23 percent.

Tabletip Games

Their political persuasions aside, my fellow players were essentially in agreement about how the current situation had come to pass: Years of “easy money,” “pure self-interest” and “cynicism” paved the way for foreign intervention. Like others in Portugal, they bristle with resentment not just at the Troika, but also at the country’s own politicians and bigwigs.

In a nod to an almost uniformly discredited political class, Vem Aí A Troika features so-called leader cards depicting various character types — the Engineer, the Tax Collector, the Mayor — drawn in salacious caricature. It also showcases run-of-the-mill opportunists, interest groups and lobbies. Another card is called “Judges” — a group “even more reviled than politicians,” according to one player.

Eyes rolled in nonpartisan synchrony over “Public Foundations” — a “hallmark of excess,” Vincent told me. The card bearing the sardonic label “Bank of Portugalandia” sparked a conversation about the Banco Português de Negócios, a scandal-sunk institution that successive governments bailed out with billions of euros of public money only to sell at a fire-sale price last year.

True to life, the rules of Vem Aí A Troika proved surprisingly complicated. Our game sometimes languished, outpaced by rants and impassioned asides.

When Vincent was cash-poor and needed money, he tossed out a card dedicated to partisan TV talk shows in exchange for a Euro card. Diogo eyed the move with suspicion, then gazed wistfully at his own hand before reaching for the group pile.

Elections were near, anticipation was high. But the card he drew brought the besuited, briefcase-toting men with dark glasses and hooded looks. The Troika had arrived.